Rules Circumvented on Huge Boeing Defense Contract

[villager]

Rules Circumvented on Huge Boeing Defense Contract

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Renae Merle, Washington Post Staff Writers

The Boeing Co.'s campaign to win federal backing for a lucrative new military airplane contract was in trouble in October 2002. The head of the Office of Management and Budget had just told the Air Force and Congress that the acquisition plan -- which featured the most costly government lease in U.S. history -- was not urgent and would squander billions of dollars.

Then White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., acting at what officials say was the direction of President Bush (news - web sites), told the Air Force and OMB to resolve their differences. Bush had been lobbied hard by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and Rep. Norman D. Dicks (D-Wash.), whose districts are in states that include, respectively, Boeing's headquarters and a key production facility.


Given the depth of the speaker's feelings about it, Bush really hoped something could be worked out, Card told others, according to a participant in the internal deliberations. And with Card's intervention, obstacles to the deal eventually fell away. Vehement objections raised by OMB and Pentagon (news - web sites) budget analysts -- that the planes were too expensive and that leasing would set a bad precedent -- were muted or withdrawn.


Card's intervention was but one fruit of a two-year lobbying campaign, mounted jointly by the Air Force and Boeing, that has brought the $21 billion to $25 billion deal within one congressional hurdle of being passed. An examination of that campaign, based on dozens of interviews and thousands of internal e-mails Boeing surrendered to the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, shows how Boeing circumvented the usual route of Pentagon acquisitions -- and, with it, many of the rules and regulations enacted over the past three decades to forestall defense contracting abuses.


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http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1802&ncid=1802&e=1&u=/washpost/20031027/ts_washpost/a21584_2003oct26

[acmavm]

1. Surprise, surprise. see the following:

<snip>

In December 2001, language authorizing the deal -- but providing no money -- emerged in legislation in what Hill veterans refer to as a "virgin birth," meaning it was inserted into the defense appropriations bill after the bill had passed the House and Senate, during closed negotiations between conferees. It was then approved on the House and Senate floors as part of a compromise bill.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a longtime supporter of expanding federal leasing, has claimed credit for inserting the language. One month before he did so, he received $21,900 in campaign contributions from 31 Boeing executives at a fundraiser in Seattle, where Boeing has many employees.

Thirty of those contributors -- including executives from the Boeing division that makes 767s -- had not contributed to Stevens in the previous decade, according to records collected by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics and first reported by Defense Week. Stevens spokeswoman Melanie Alvord said there is no connection between the contributions and the legislation.

<snip>

No connection between teh contributions and the legislation. Oh sure, just a happy coincidence.

[gratuitous]

2. What a bunch of dummies those Boeing execs were

Stevens was going to sponsor their favorable legislation anyway, and they just gave him all that money! The dopes.

It's not so much the blatant graft and corruption that bothers me, though it bothers me a lot; it's the lying about it as if we couldn't see it with our own eyes that gets me nail-spitting mad.

[villager]

4. but they lie in plain sight...

...all the time, and get away with it...

[Zhade]

3. KICK

Kick to keep this in sight

[Parche]

5. Waste of money

As we all know the AirForce does need new
tankers, but they should buy them outright
and not waste money by leasing them.